Can we do something like this as a community, but much more polished? I am good at getting stuff started but not technical enough to make the necessary excerpts to have everything flow well. It could almost be like a slideshow with commentary, twitter posts, video's and our analysis of the issues.

How to undermine gun ownership and push for new laws.

Capture the attention of the uninformed- Bob Costas on Haltime NFL football quoting Jason Whitlock, ask for a gun ban. http://youtu.be/NjbUf4GZrMk

Reinforce it unchallenged - Go on Dan Patrick Show and further reinforce your reason for a gun ban. Undermine all gun owners by calling for a ban on semi autos. http://youtu.be/JitGn7ulHeI

Further reinforce it unchallenged but on a "conservative" talk show- Go on Oreilly and spew lies about automatic weapons, body armor, and bulk ammo being bought on the internet. http://youtu.be/hmzPeLfbD8A

Lie that 40% of guns are bought without background checks on Oreilly.

Have Piers Morgan bring Alan Derschowitz on the program and say that we are criminals for even owning a gun, and that he would rather be "punched in the face" in referance to a domestic dispute than have the permanence of a gun kill someone (because nobody has ever used a knife or fists to kill), and say that Jovan and Kasandra would still be alive had it only not be for a gun. http://youtu.be/hmzPeLfbD8A

Have Abby Huntsman (daughter of John Huntsman) be completely confused on the gun issue but repeat the oft told lie that you can mail order an AK 47, therefore because the founding fathers didn't know about those, it must be bad.

Continue to repeat the line in various forms " I support the 2nd Amendment, but we need to ban carrying them, we need to ban AK-47's, we need to ban military style assault weapons" They of course know that it is illegal to buy a full automatic assault rifle, but have hitched their wagon to the term "assault weapon" which means any gun that looks scary, but is still a semi automatic.

Do this on every occasion of high profile shooting, lather, rinse, repeat.

__________________
just happy to be here. I like talking about better ways to protect ourselves.

show how the nonsense is perpetuated. all the lies, misnomers, unrefuted positions that are just repeated and repeated. How they are doing this costas pony show going around saying in one hand "i respect the 2nd amendment" and five seconds later "We need to ban semi auto's"

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just happy to be here. I like talking about better ways to protect ourselves.

This is nothing more than an agenda in its death throes. They are losing the public opinion war. That is why they need puppets like Bob Costas to blindside people watching football on a Sunday night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs

In free states this is probably correct (just not in California), so he omitted this fact. In some free states you CAN meet someone at a gas station and pay them and take an "item" home. This is in free states that don't have all the immoral and ignorant liberal people we do living in big cities, w/less illegals who might be selling illegal firearms, and less drug-use/sales to support the cartels. Most free-states do not have the ignorance that LA, SD, SanFran, and such have. So stupid firearm laws made by stupid politicians are not pushed as much.

I need to move to a free-state...

__________________
"That's what governments are for - get in a man's way." - Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds

Originally Posted by Dr. Michael Brown
Don't worry about getting technical details right. Many a reporter
has accidentally written about semi-automatic revolvers or committed
other minor errors. Since most people know little about guns, this is
not a problem. Only the gun nuts will complain and they don't count.
The emotional content of your article is much more important than the
factual details, since people are more easily influenced through their
emotions than through logic.

Gun owners must never be seen in a positive light. Do not mention
that these misguided individuals may actually be well educated, or
have respectable jobs and healthy families. They should be called
"gun nuts" if possible or simply gun owners at best.

Wow. I think most of us knew the media was biased and had a script they followed to promote their anti-gun agenda, but I had no idea there was a published guide on how to do it.

Don't know how long this has been out, but it's the first time I've seen it.

It was entertaining, yet terribly disturbing to read.

The worst part was looking back on past articles and news stories and realizing the media follows this guide almost word for word.

Wow. I think most of us knew the media was biased and had a script they followed to promote their anti-gun agenda, but I had no idea there was a published guide on how to do it.

Don't know how long this has been out, but it's the first time I've seen it.

It was entertaining, yet terribly disturbing to read.

The worst part was looking back on past articles and news stories and realizing the media follows this guide almost word for word.

There is no such guide.

This is just one guy.

I've worked as a reporter and I have many friends in the media still.

There is no such guide. The fact is that many people who tend to be attracted to a career in journalism tend to lean liberal, and that many liberals tend to have an anti-gun bias.

The irony is that most media outlet owners often are not liberal at all, but are often conservatives. But they are capitalists, and the business of a newspaper or a TV network is to sell ads to remain in business.

That can be slowly fixed, but it won't happen if many gun owners believe there is some sort of conspiracy against gun owners. There isn't.

You're right. It was irresponsible of me to state/suggest there is a media conspiracy against gun owners. I read though each of the points in that article, from 1999, and can see no correlation between what he wrote nearly 14 years ago and the reporting I read and see daily.

What exactly is it that "can be slowly fixed"? Newspaper and TV networks selling ads to remain in business? Or, liberals tendency for anti-gun bias?

To those who think I was misinformed about the OP, here is the first line of the OP:

>Can we do something like this as a community, but much more polished?

(CDF): I wrote that that's a poor strategy. I showed that the heavy losses suffered in the last election by the minority party stemmed from misinformation pushed by that party.

I said misinformation contributed to the loss, and as a gun community we should not engage in misinformation campaigns. My below the line suggestion is that as a community we will lose if we support misinformation campaigns.

The two kids above could find no facts, no examples, could muster no logic, could muster no reasons what so ever in support of their posts. All they could muster were back-of-the-3rd-grade-classroom "lookitme's".

I see you, and I find you lacking.

Those kinds of posts show precisely why the gun community should avoid misinformation campaigns. When posters lack facts, logic, and reasons, we perceive their posts as being without substance. Such posts are the result of having either no information or the wrong information. Such posts are weak.

The gun community will do better standing on solid facts, cogent reasoning, and sensible debate.

To those who think I was misinformed about the OP, here is the first line of the OP:

>Can we do something like this as a community, but much more polished?

It looks like the OP is trying to create a documented trail of actual events with analytical analysis of how the misinformation works in today's media, not attempting to start a misinformation campaign of his own.

Whether an anti gun strategy exists (unlikely, more likely just personal beliefs), or is a consequence of emotional outbursts (much more likely), the way it pans out resembles an organized effort. Since there is a pattern, understanding it and documenting it wouldn't be amiss.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDFingers

(CDF): I wrote that that's a poor strategy. I showed that the heavy losses suffered in the last election by the minority party stemmed from misinformation pushed by that party.

You didn't show anything. You made an arbitrary speculation. Besides, this thread is not about politics.

You're right. It was irresponsible of me to state/suggest there is a media conspiracy against gun owners. I read though each of the points in that article, from 1999, and can see no correlation between what he wrote nearly 14 years ago and the reporting I read and see daily.

What exactly is it that "can be slowly fixed"? Newspaper and TV networks selling ads to remain in business? Or, liberals tendency for anti-gun bias?

Educating journalists. Writing to them not foaming at the mouth when they make a mistake, but explaining what they got wrong. Offering them angles for stories they probably don't know about. And so on.

In other words, we need to lose the snark and the confrontational approach, and stop playing victims.

It's a slow process, because it's a cultural issue. Not a political one.

Educating journalists. Writing to them not foaming at the mouth when they make a mistake, but explaining what they got wrong. Offering them angles for stories they probably don't know about. And so on.

Hard to do due to anti's rethoric which always plays on emotions and derrogatory talking points. Countering such negativity with reason tends to lose the message unless the journalist in question is willing to do some research.

Not to mention that journalists should be similar to scientists in their pursuit of truth, yet too many decide to be less-than-stellar in objective research of gun issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by a1c

In other words, we need to lose the snark and the confrontational approach, and stop playing victims.

Sometimes "playing victim" gives pretty good results. Many groups used it effectively as a support to their legal and legislative efforts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by a1c

It's a slow process, because it's a cultural issue. Not a political one.

This is the main difference between media and courts of law, so we should always keep it in mind.

Barack Obama won 303 electoral votes to Romney’s 206, securing a second term in as President of the United States.. The popular votes are still coming in, but Obama has a slight lead with 59,621,436 to Romney’s 56,989,709. [Obama won the popular vote BY ONLY SLIGHTLY MORE THAN 1%]. The Democrats regain control of the senate with 51 seats to the GOP’s 45 and the Republicans regain control of the House with 232 seats to the Dems 191.

... One of the biggest take-aways from last night’s presidential election was just how divided of a nation that we are. With a virtual split in the popular vote and a divided control of power in the Senate and House it is clear that as a nation we have a lot of work to do in order to get work done.

I showed that the heavy losses suffered in the last election by the minority party stemmed from misinformation pushed by that party.

You're still wrong about this "heavy losses" statistic. I'd call that "misinformation" and you're the one pushing it. 1% of the popular vote is not a "heavy loss" by any stretch of the imagination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDFingers

When posters lack facts, logic, and reasons, we perceive their posts as being without substance. Such posts are the result of having either no information or the wrong information. Such posts are weak.

I agree. Your posts lack facts. And since your logic and reasons are based on this lack of facts, "we perceive your posts as being without substance. ... Such posts are weak."

Well, if you guys think pushing misinformation is a good strategy, go right ahead. The results of such a strategy are available for all to perceive: a loss is a loss, even more so in California for the Republicans.

Some say we should attack emotionally based fear mongering with facts. Problem is we are on planet Earth, not planet Vulcan.

Humans are emotionally wired, we are 24 x more responsive to emotion than logic.

Of course there are differences between us, we are not all alike.

We should be hitting back with emotional based arguments laying the blame for gun violence where it squarely belongs, on failed government policies that have destroyed many people's dreams, their hope and their desire to be the best they can be.

The failure isn't just government, it is a multi system failure across the board where so called leaders have epically failed.

The problem is we have parasitic self interest groups who will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo, regardless of how many people's lives are destroyed.

The problem on our side is many gun owners are willing to let the rest of the bill of rights be destroyed in the name of public safety.

However, things are changing and hopefully the American people will start pushing for individual rights over government tyranny and propaganda.

You'd think the emotional argument on our side would be both easy and compelling:

Your daughter is about to be killed on the street by a madman with a knife. Would you prefer at that point that she have a cellphone, or a gun? Understand that if intervention doesn't happen within the next 5 seconds, she is dead.

If the choice is the gun, then you must support the right to carry a loaded firearm in public, because the gun won't magically appear in her hands -- she has to have it on her, and the time constraints are such that it has to be loaded and ready to use.

The cellphone is just a way she can inform someone else that she'll be dead by the time they get to her.

Your daughter is about to be killed on the street by a madman with a knife. Would you prefer at that point that she have a cellphone, or a gun? Understand that if intervention doesn't happen within the next 5 seconds, she is dead.

Even better emotional argument is to remove guns initially and just convey the concept of "self defense," then introduce "armed self defense with a rock," and only then guns.

So, it would go like this. Your daughter is about to be raped. She has the right to fight back and if the attacker gets hurt, she is still the victim and she still had the right to fight back. If she manages to grab a rock while being tackled and hit the attacker, that is completely acceptable. Finally, if she is prepared and has a gun to protect herself, that is just a different arm. In any case, her right to protect herself trumps any rights the attacker trying to rape her might have.

Even better emotional argument is to remove guns initially and just convey the concept of "self defense," then introduce "armed self defense with a rock," and only then guns.

That would be true if we were attempting to build a logical argument. But what we're after is an effective emotional appeal.

For that to work, the appeal has to be as simple and as direct as possible. It has to talk to your hindbrain. It's why I set up the scenario as I did:

It's simple and direct

It leaves no real options on the table (which is generally true of such situations)

It has as its center someone the target audience cares about deeply

It directly illustrates the fallacy of the "alternatives" that are usually suggested as "effective" by the other side

Anything that complicates the picture is going to force one to think, and that will blunt the emotional impact as well as reduce the overall effectiveness.

Also note that the scenario in question implicitly includes the notion that one has an inherent right to self-defense, for to say that one does not in that situation is to say that the daughter must allow herself to be killed.

“She was approached by the suspect, we heard from one witness that she ran a short distance and was yelling and that the suspect dragged her down and started stabbing her,” said police spokeswoman Tania Rues.

You'd think the emotional argument on our side would be both easy and compelling:

Your daughter is about to be killed on the street by a madman with a knife. Would you prefer at that point that she have a cellphone, or a gun? Understand that if intervention doesn't happen within the next 5 seconds, she is dead.

If the choice is the gun, then you must support the right to carry a loaded firearm in public, because the gun won't magically appear in her hands -- she has to have it on her, and the time constraints are such that it has to be loaded and ready to use.

The cellphone is just a way she can inform someone else that she'll be dead by the time they get to her.

Remember that the purpose of an emotional argument here is to make clear emotionally that which is already clear rationally: that the right to life of necessity means having the right to immediate access to potent and effective arms that make defense of life likely to succeed. In the real world, that means the right to carry a loaded firearm in public, for the need for self-defense is most acute wherever you happen to be, not just in the home.

The antis will bicker and argue about whether any given person needs a firearm, whether they need the characteristics it brings, etc., but at the end of the day, their words ring hollow in the face of the need of an innocent woman who is, thanks to the very laws the antis support, at the mercy of a criminal who intends to do her grievous harm.

It needs to be made clear to everyone that there are only two possible scenarios:

Armed criminals versus armed law-abiding people

Armed criminals versus unarmed law-abiding people

That's it. The scenario of a society of unarmed criminals up against unarmed law-abiding people is a fantasy that has never happened in the entire history of the world.

So between the two possible scenarios, which one is it going to be? Are the antis really going to argue that they prefer armed criminals against unarmed law-abiding citizens? That they prefer the citizenry to have no effective means of defense against armed criminals (for an unarmed criminal basically doesn't exist, since such a criminal has no power over his victims)?

The case needs to be made in the strongest possible terms that the position the antis take is inherently bankrupt at all levels: logically, ethically, and emotionally. They may have good intentions, but good intentions have never saved anyone from becoming a victim of the machinations of criminals. Firearms have.

Bob Costas came on at Half Time and I shut the TV off. I can't be bothered watching commercials and putting up with his babble while waiting for the 2nd half. I'm sure a lot of other gunners do the same thing instead of listening to a guy who would not even make a good 'athletic supporter' let alone make sense in contravening our Bill of Rights.

__________________
"That Government should be of laws rather than of men"
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And, to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!"

Educating journalists. Writing to them not foaming at the mouth when they make a mistake, but explaining what they got wrong. Offering them angles for stories they probably don't know about. And so on.

In other words, we need to lose the snark and the confrontational approach, and stop playing victims.

It's a slow process, because it's a cultural issue. Not a political one.

I agree that this is a cultural issue (without "sarcasm" this time). To add to your's and Nicki's points, the bottom line is money. Higher ratings command higher ad revenue and sensationalism in reporting gets higher ratings. Traffic and weather are important to many, but shootings, death and other tragedies will always be the top stories due the emotional impact they achieve.

Educating journalists by writing them and pointing out errors in their content and misinformation, in a civilized manner, may or may not be effective. I imagine the "Delete" key and the word "Whatever" get a lot of use in the newsroom. While we should try to educate them, taking only this approach on a case by case basis certainly would be a slow process and largely ineffective in my opinion as we are asking journalists to take some of the emotion away from their stories. Conversely, the backlash Bob Costas and others receive from people foaming at the mouth seems to get them backtracking and/or publicly apologizing, which seems immediately effective to me.

To get back on topic, I didn't see any part of the original post stating we should spread misinformation. The op's second post in this thread stated we should show how this nonsense is perpetuated. The Calguns homepage has Firearms Links and Firearms Resources sections, but a link to a well written factual article, directly under "Enter the Forums", to something like "Misnomers about Firearms" would likely get a lot of hits by people visiting the site for the first time.

It's a slow process, because it's a cultural issue. Not a political one.

I would have to say that the issue is both cultural and political. Cultural is easy enough for all to understand and I think that it can be overcome with time and education. To explain why I think it’s also a political issue is easy enough to understand too. From the dawn of time, people have always wanted to control other people, thus you get politically motivated laws to keep the upper class in command of the peasants and most leaders don't want to give up their power. You can reference this fact by reading history and in today’s society look at the DNC platform and the laws restricting the RKBA from both parties. This too can be overcome, eventually, but it would definitely help to speed things up if we could change the cultural bias first. Now I couldn’t even come close to explain why the media in the old days seemed to be critical of all government dealings, but today they are sheep that follow with blind acceptance.

I would have to say that the issue is both cultural and political. Cultural is easy enough for all to understand and I think that it can be overcome with time and education. To explain why I think it’s also a political issue is easy enough to understand too. From the dawn of time, people have always wanted to control other people, thus you get politically motivated laws to keep the upper class in command of the peasants and most leaders don't want to give up their power. You can reference this fact by reading history and in today’s society look at the DNC platform and the laws restricting the RKBA from both parties. This too can be overcome, eventually, but it would definitely help to speed things up if we could change the cultural bias first. Now I couldn’t even come close to explain why the media in the old days seemed to be critical of all government dealings, but today they are sheep that follow with blind acceptance.

Ray

I completely agree with you. As you point out, it's by changing the cultural bias that you eventually conquer the political one.

We can just look at recent history and see for instance how evangelical/charismatic Christians, which are nowadays associated with social conservative values and the GOP, used to actually be a socially progressive movement just a few decades ago (people tend forget the first evangelical president was not George W. Bush, but Jimmy Carter).

Similarly, gun control didn't use to be so closely associated with the Democratic Party, but now it obvisouly is. Well, it doesn't have to be. What needs to happen is to marginalize progressively gun control advocates and for us to show how out-of-touch they are, and that they're not focusing on the real problems that are at the root of violence.

Now I couldn’t even come close to explain why the media in the old days seemed to be critical of all government dealings, but today they are sheep that follow with blind acceptance.

I can.

The media in the old days was owned by a relatively large number of groups and individuals, and was largely localized. Elections are won or lost based on the perceptions of the voters, and those perceptions are the result of the information the voters receive. In a world where there are many competing news outlets, control of information is relatively limited and, thus, news sources have some incentive to actually get things right.

Then broadcast television came into existence. For the first time, not only was the media able to reach most of the entire population of the country, but the number of media outlets that was able to do so was very limited. National news took center stage and the local news sources became relegated to the back. Additionally, there was a shift from news being a source of information to news being a source of entertainment.

What happens when you put control of the information that the majority of people receive and subsequently use to control their voting decisions into the hands of the very few? Control over elections, that's what. The advent of cable threatened to disrupt that control, but that has since been taken care of through mergers and acquisitions.

Today, it is impossible for a national candidate (like the President) to get elected unless that candidate gets national media attention. The situation isn't much better for congressional candidates, since most local broadcast news outlets are owned (and thus controlled) by the very entities that own the national broadcast outlets. The national broadcast media is now in the driver's seat when it comes to elections, and has been for the past 40 years or so. This is why you don't see the media criticizing government all that much: the government as it is exists because the media itself made it that way, through its control over the information people use to vote.

At this point, only the internet can possibly reverse this, which is why you can expect to see continuing efforts on the part of the government to control it.

That would be true if we were attempting to build a logical argument. But what we're after is an effective emotional appeal.

The word "gun" has a tremendous emotional appeal and those who hate/fear guns will shut down the moment you utter it. Say the word and you lost your audience. That's why self defense concept needs to be introduced one step at a time.

The media in the old days was owned by a relatively large number of groups and individuals, and was largely localized. Elections are won or lost based on the perceptions of the voters, and those perceptions are the result of the information the voters receive. In a world where there are many competing news outlets, control of information is relatively limited and, thus, news sources have some incentive to actually get things right.

Then broadcast television came into existence. For the first time, not only was the media able to reach most of the entire population of the country, but the number of media outlets that was able to do so was very limited. National news took center stage and the local news sources became relegated to the back. Additionally, there was a shift from news being a source of information to news being a source of entertainment.

What happens when you put control of the information that the majority of people receive and subsequently use to control their voting decisions into the hands of the very few? Control over elections, that's what. The advent of cable threatened to disrupt that control, but that has since been taken care of through mergers and acquisitions.

Today, it is impossible for a national candidate (like the President) to get elected unless that candidate gets national media attention. The situation isn't much better for congressional candidates, since most local broadcast news outlets are owned (and thus controlled) by the very entities that own the national broadcast outlets. The national broadcast media is now in the driver's seat when it comes to elections, and has been for the past 40 years or so. This is why you don't see the media criticizing government all that much: the government as it is exists because the media itself made it that way, through its control over the information people use to vote.

At this point, only the internet can possibly reverse this, which is why you can expect to see continuing efforts on the part of the government to control it.

Thanks for your clear and insightful reply. Makes perfect sense, since we see bills like SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA making the rounds in congress and both parties initiating and endorsing them.

These are the same strategies used by the Republican Party, both in California and at the national level.

The Republican Party lost very badly.

Don't use lies and misinformation if you want to build a legitimate case for gun ownership.

Those who lie and misinform about gun rights as a way to increase these rights will have me to deal with.

Don't do it.

CDFingers

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDFingers

To those who think I was misinformed about the OP, here is the first line of the OP:

>Can we do something like this as a community, but much more polished?

(CDF): I wrote that that's a poor strategy. I showed that the heavy losses suffered in the last election by the minority party stemmed from misinformation pushed by that party.

I said misinformation contributed to the loss, and as a gun community we should not engage in misinformation campaigns. My below the line suggestion is that as a community we will lose if we support misinformation campaigns.

The two kids above could find no facts, no examples, could muster no logic, could muster no reasons what so ever in support of their posts. All they could muster were back-of-the-3rd-grade-classroom "lookitme's".

I see you, and I find you lacking.

Those kinds of posts show precisely why the gun community should avoid misinformation campaigns. When posters lack facts, logic, and reasons, we perceive their posts as being without substance. Such posts are the result of having either no information or the wrong information. Such posts are weak.

The gun community will do better standing on solid facts, cogent reasoning, and sensible debate.

CDFingers

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDFingers

Well, if you guys think pushing misinformation is a good strategy, go right ahead. The results of such a strategy are available for all to perceive: a loss is a loss, even more so in California for the Republicans.

I guess the njineermike's of the state don't want any fact checkers controlling their approach to guns and gun laws.

We perceive the result of ignoring the fact checkers.

Here is how arguments work:

Facts are the strongest reasons that support an argument.

Law and Policy are the second strongest reasons, though laws/policies made by people may be unmade by people.

The least strong reasons that support an argument are based on value. This is not to say that value reasons are irrelevant--as shown above, emotions are useful in persuasion. But value reasons are easy to oppose.

Those who ignore those three general rules will lose most arguments; enacting, or repealing, laws entails making, and winning, cogent arguments.

CDFingers

Last edited by CDFingers; 12-11-2012 at 7:26 AM..
Reason: sold a word; punctuated